


tiny cities made of ashes

by mambo



Series: child of thanos [3]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Captain America - All Media Types, Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Child of Thanos Steve, Gentle But Manic Touching, Identity Issues, Identity Porn, M/M, Protective Steve Rogers, Sclater's lemur, Sex, Steve As A Child Of Thanos, Winter Soldier Bucky Barnes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-14
Updated: 2019-07-19
Packaged: 2020-03-05 11:17:11
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,164
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18827602
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mambo/pseuds/mambo
Summary: Their plan has three parts: disable Bucky's kill triggers, find a ship, and leave the planet.So they go to New York to find someone who can help them with step one.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * Translation into English available: [tiny cities made of ashes/废墟之城](https://archiveofourown.org/works/18954787) by [Yueluo](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Yueluo/pseuds/Yueluo)



> Happy friendaversary hakunahistata!!!! I've loved the past three years of knowing you, bud. Can't wait to see you soon!

“We can’t stay here,” Steve says.

“I know.”

Steve presses a hand to Bucky’s bare abdomen and traces the deep scars on his side with his index finger as they think about next steps. They’ve hid out here for too long and they both know it. Bad form. “Thanos doesn’t know that I’ve abandoned his cause. I can stall for a few days. We have more time there, though not much. There’s only so long he’ll believe that I haven’t located the Tesseract. I’m good at my job.”

“Hydra will probably be here any minute,” Bucky says, laying back on the lumpy motel pillow. He loves Steve’s hands on him, has begun to hate any moment when they’re not touching. Steve is happy to oblige him.

“I’m not concerned that the parasites will attack us,” Steve says. “I’ll slit the throat of anyone who comes near you.” Bucky hums in agreement. “But do you know what kill triggers they have installed on you?”

“Two in my teeth, my stomach, and my arm. And the trigger words.”

“Write them down for me.” Bucky hesitates a moment, then starts to extricate himself from the bed, only to have Steve reach for him, pull him back down next to him. “Not now. Not right now. Stay here now.” He pulls Bucky into him, wraps an arm around his bare back. Steve’s eyes glow bright in the otherwise dark room. “We’ll leave tomorrow. Find someone who can deinstall the triggers, then we’ll get a ship. But that’s tomorrow.” Bucky leans in and kisses him because it’s still tonight.

Steve kisses with the same kind of manic, gentle intensity that he does everything else. He kisses Bucky like he’s precious, but simultaneously like it’s the last time, that it can all be taken away. Steve wants to envelop him; Bucky wants to be enveloped. Bucky feels Steve’s dick nudge at his thigh again, even though their hearts have hardly stopped racing from the last time. They’re both insatiable. Bucky hopes the feeling never goes away.

“What do you want?” Steve asks, pulling away for a moment. His breath is warm on Bucky’s face, which only makes Bucky pull closer to meet him again.

“You,” Bucky says simply against Steve’s lips. Steve nods, reaching down. “It’s open from last time,” Bucky tells him. Steve nods, then preps himself with the small bottle of lube they bought from the vending machine near their motel room.

“Alright,” Steve says, before finally, finally leaning back in for another kiss. It’s a hungry kiss, all tongue and teeth and Steve. As Steve moves down to Bucky’s neck, he sucks hard. Bucky presses his nose to Steve’s hair and sniffs, smelling Steve’s sweat. His own dick starts firming up as Steve begins to lathe his nipple with his tongue. He bites down and Bucky can’t help the breathy, wanting noise that comes from his mouth. Steve looks up then, and those eyes, those eyes. They look at him with such intense want, a need from a dozen lifetimes spent apart from one another. “Are you ready?” Steve asks. Bucky nods, barely able to speak. “Say it, please,” Steve asks, though he’s so rarely polite.

“Please,” Bucky echoes back, undone by the man on top of him.

Steve doesn’t need to be told again. He throws aside the covers and lines himself up over Bucky, angling Bucky’s lithe legs so that when he pushes in, he’ll hit the right spot. And when he does push in, he does hit that spot. Steve fucks him steady, always watching Bucky, always making sure that Bucky’s feeling as much pleasure as he is. Bucky puts a hand on himself, and it doesn’t take long before he’s coming, squirting onto his stomach and Steve’s. Steve puts a hand into the mess and wipes it across his own face, licks it off of his fingers, eyes wide and mouth grinning. He starts to pound a little harder and just as Bucky comes back from his own orgasm, Steve’s whole body tenses and he comes inside of him.

He stays atop of Bucky for a long moment, shoulders hitching with labored breaths. Then, he pulls himself out of Bucky and lays on top of him, as much of his body touching Bucky’s as he can manage. Steve sticks his head into the crook of Bucky’s neck and kisses the place where flesh and metal meet. He hums something, a song that Bucky doesn’t know, then falls asleep.

It doesn’t take long for Bucky to sync Steve’s deep, restful breaths with his own and fall into the deepest sleep he’s been in for seventy years.

— —

“What are you wearing?” Bucky asks, looking at Steve up and down in mild horror.

“Clothes,” Steve says. He stalks across the room, then stops when he finds his discarded pair of boots left laying strewn across the floor.

Steve is wearing his tac gear, head-to-toe in an unearthly kind of leather. He’s also wearing a different pair of goggles. They don’t hide the blue of his eyes nearly as well and he complains that they flatten the hair on the back of his head down too much. Bucky apparently broke his favorite pair, though he can’t bring himself to regret it.

“You can’t wear that,” Bucky says.

“Why not?”

“You’ll stick out.”

“This planet has terrible fashion.” Steve kicks at his boot with a pouty slant to his mouth. “I don’t want to wear…” He gestures to the jeans, t-shirt, and jacket Bucky are wearing. “That.”

“This is what people here wear.”

Steve scowls. “Well, I don’t want to be here.”

“I don’t think you have much of a choice.” 

Except, he does. Steve could leave. He could decide to go back to his mission. All he’d have to do is find the Tesseract and return to Thanos; no one would ever even know about his momentary defection. Bucky would… at that point, going back into cryo would be a blessing. Debrief. The chair. His hand shakes. He’d be punished; he’d forget Steve. But if Steve decided that was the way to go, perhaps forgetting about him would be a mercy. Still, the chair. The chair. The—

There’s a hand on his shoulder, startling him out of his thoughts. He looks up at Steve, who looks down at him, face serious. “The triggers, then a ship. Then you and I leave together.” His grip goes tighter. “Say it.”

“Triggers. Ship. Leave.”

He nods. “And you don’t leave my side until then. I am not letting you go. Say it again.”

“Triggers. Ship. Leave.”

“Good.” He turns Bucky around and kisses him, hard. “Now tell me what I need to wear to keep the parasites from staring.”

— —

“Sit on the inside,” Steve directs Bucky, who obliges, slipping into the bus’s window seat. Steve handles their baggage, sliding it up into the overhead compartment. They’re traveling lighter than Bucky would like to be, but they don’t have much of a choice if they don’t want to be suspicious. Carrying around machine guns would give just about everything away, so they only have the one duffle bag, just big enough to fit Steve’s shield. Steve initially suggested they steal a car for their trip to New York, but Bucky said no; he can only imagine how much attention Steve’s driving skills would bring them. It’ll be easier to stay incognito this way, even if they’re on a bus full of people.

So they slip inside the bus. Steve’s eyes still glow from behind his sunglasses, but it’s so faint that you’d have to be paying attention to notice them. Bucky is paying attention. Once Bucky’s settled, Steve lifts his legs and drapes them across Bucky’s lap, boots against the side of the bus. He curls into Bucky’s side and starts kissing his neck. The woman in the seat in front of them turns around pointedly, giving them a judgemental look, her painted lips frowning. 

“Knock it off,” Bucky says in a quiet voice.

“Why?” Steve whines.

“The attention.”

Steve huffs dramatically, flopping down so his head rests on his knees. “What am I supposed to do for fourteen hours?” he asks.

“Look out the window. I’ll switch seats.”

“No,” Steve says quickly, putting a possessive hand on Bucky’s knee. Bucky cocks an eyebrow as Steve looks up at him with a smile. “I just want to look at you.”

Something warm and unfamiliar settles in Bucky’s stomach. Well, unfamiliar until the past few days. Now, it’s a more familiar feeling, a feeling brought on by Steve. He reaches over to Steve’s face and lowers his sunglasses down on his nose for just a moment, taking in the way that Steve’s bright blue eyes stare deeply into his own. Steve tightens his grip on Bucky’s knee.

Bucky pushes Steve’s glasses back up on his face and lets his hand rest on Steve’s leg. They stay that way for a long time. Both of them have been trained to sit still.

— —

“This place reeks of piss,” Steve says as they step out onto the streets of Manhattan.

He’s not incorrect.

But Bucky doesn’t respond, feeling a certain kind of vertigo as he stares at the skyscrapers around him. Things have changed, but there are flashes, prickles of memories that he wants to grab at but disappear as he chases them.

Steve looks at him, then slings an arm around his back, his hand in Bucky’s back pocket. He squeezes gently. “You with me?” he asks. Bucky nods.

“It’s the one with an A on it,” Bucky says. “Maximum security.”

Steve snorts. “This planet is so primitive.”

“You have a plan?” Bucky asks as they start walking down the sidewalk with the rest of the hoards emerging from the bus station. The smells of the city nearly overwhelm him with a strange nostalgia. If it weren’t for Steve guiding the way, he would stop, unsure of how to continue. Whether he even could.

But Steve does guide him wordlessly and gentle, making his way towards Avengers Tower. “There’s cameras on every corner,” Bucky says. “It won’t be long until Hydra comes for us.”

“We’ll be ready,” Steve assures him, though they only have enough supplies to fill theone duffle bag, which Steve is carrying in his free hand. Then again, the two of them without a weapon between them is still a danger. But Hydra knows Bucky inside and out. They could make him turn on—

He tries not to think about it. Soon, hopefully, the triggers won’t exist.

Bucky looks at Steve, who glances back at him, then smiles, tight-lipped. “Do you remember anything?” Bucky asks for the first time as they pass a familiar street corner.

“No,” Steve says simply. He doesn’t seem tortured by it. “But you said we lived here?” Bucky nods. “We had bad taste.”

“We lived across the river. Brooklyn,” Bucky says. “It’s different there.”

“There’s a planet on the other end of the galaxy where people build houses over water that runs like turquoise. When the sun sets every day, the people sit on their porches and sing songs. We killed half of them,” he adds, matter-of-fact, “But the planet is doing well. When this is over, I’ll take you there.”

“Triggers, ship, leave,” Bucky says.

“This is step one.”

“I…” Bucky starts, but doesn’t know how to finish the sentence.

Steve stops, spins Bucky around and kisses him hard. Angry locals dodge them, muttering under their breath. One loud man across the street shouts, “Only in New York!” to his family. Steve doesn’t care, just pushes into Bucky’s space, kissing him like he’s trying to suck the life out of him. Maybe Bucky kisses back with the same kind of intensity, he thinks he does, but he can barely tell, lost to feeling and to Steve.

And as quickly as it began, Steve pulls off of him, slings his hand back around Bucky’s back and guides them towards the tower in the distance.

Triggers. Ship. Leave.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Their plan has three parts: disable Bucky's kill triggers, find a ship, and leave the planet.
> 
> Somehow none of it works as planned.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I wrote and rewrote this about nine hundred times. I'm still not satisfied with it, but there's so much more I want to write and can't until this is posted and done, so here it is in all its imperfect glory.
> 
> Also want to give a huge thank you to [Deisderium](https://twitter.com/deisderium) for being this series' biggest cheerleader. I really appreciate it and love you.

Tony Stark wakes up with a knife pressed to his throat.

“Your systems have been disabled for another six minutes,” says the glowy-eyed person who is currently holding a knife to his throat.

“You realize that telling me that means that I only need to think of how to stall you for six minutes, right?” Tony asks, though his eyes move to the space in bed next to him where Pepper slept. It’s empty now; he swallows hard.

“She was called away from the building to handle an emergency elsewhere,” says another male voice from somewhere in the room. “She’s safe,” they add, softer. “So are you.”

“Just out of morbid curiosity, how many nightcrawlers are there in my state-of-the-art, highly-secure bedroom?” Tony asks, ignoring, perhaps, the easier question of whether or not one can truly be safe when a cyborg human has a knife pressed to one’s throat.

“Just the two,” says voice number two. The lights flip on and, in fact, there are only two of the nightcrawlers in Tony Stark’s bedroom. Number One is still on top of him, wearing a leather get-up that wouldn’t look out of place at the underground New York Comic Con Sci-Fi Sex Dungeon that he is sure that exists. Number One notices him looking and his lips split into what can be best characterized as a serial killer smile. Though, Tony kind of gets it, to be honest — even if he obviously would like to skin him alive, there’s something kind of hot about Number One. Though, simultaneously, something almost familiar about the face hovering in front of him. Tony racks his brain, trying to remember where he’s seen this man before because he has seen this man before. Most assuredly not in his bed before tonight, but there’s something about his face that feels like he knows it. Intimately.

He looks over at Number Two, who is also dressed all in leather — though his get up is a lot less alien and a lot more normal sex dungeon — and whose long hair hangs around his face. He’s not bad-looking either, though there’s something haunted about his blue eyes that’s a turn-off. But if Tony’s going to be murdered in his own home, it may as well be by the hot psychopaths. Maybe they want a Tony Stark sandwich beforehand, which Tony wouldn’t necessarily mind, either. It would give him the time to make an escape plan, at least.

“So, what’s your deal?” Tony asks. “Planning to murder me?”

“Not necessarily,” Number One says, though his smile says otherwise.

“Five minutes,” Number Two responds.

“Better hurry up with your villain speech,” Tony prompts, the knife cold on his neck.

“I am the Captain, a Child of Thanos. We’re here—”

“Steve,” Number Two interrupts, his voice quiet but firm.

Number One frowns, the vein in his neck twitches. “What?” he says in a cold voice, glowing eyes still staring at Tony’s. He doesn’t spare a glance at his compatriot.

Number Two appears next to the bed and looks at Number One with a sad intensity. He reaches out and touches his arm for just a moment, then drops it. “Your name is Steve Rogers. Your mother’s name was Sarah.” His voice sounds wrecked, like the words are hard to say, but there’s determination in his voice.

Number One pauses, glowing eyes flicking over to Number Two for just a moment, then back to Tony. He takes a moment, a breath. Then he says, “My name is Steve Rogers, child of Sarah. We are-”

And then it clicks.

“Steve Rogers?” Tony asks, incredulous. “Are you telling me that Sclater's lemur here is Captain America?” Number One just frowns, so Tony turns to Number Two. “What does that make you, Bucky Barnes?” he asks, joking, thinking about the Captain America and Bucky lunchbox his father handed to him for his sixth birthday and which he subsequently threw out the window. Minus the limp Kurt Cobain hair, Number Two could definitely be Bucky Barnes, which is a frankly terrifying prospect.

“Don’t fucking look at him,” Number One snarls, pressing the knife closer to Tony’s throat. It’s a fraction of pressure away from cutting now. Apparently, looking at him was the wrong move. Duly noted.

“Yeah, I am,” Number Two says, nonchalant, apparently more worried about his boyfriend introducing himself incorrectly than him threatening to murder an innocent man trying to get a decent night’s sleep.

Or, a moderately innocent man.

“Hey, you mind calling your star-spangled murder bot off of me and explaining why two dead American heroes are currently threatening my very valuable life?”

Number One/Child of Thanos/Captain America looks at Bucky Barnes, who nods, barely perceptible, then in one graceful movement, removes himself from Tony’s bed. But before Tony can even sit up, Bucky Barnes has a glock pointed at his head. “Four minutes,” he says, then, “I’ll explain.”

— —

“Do you expect me to believe all of this is real?” Tony asks once Bucky Barnes tells him their entire sob story, from their untimely not-deaths during World War II to their preposterously coincidental reunion seventy years later in Wisconsin of all places.

“Yes,” Steve Rogers says. “You’ve met my father. You can see what he’s capable of.”

If you can really what happened during the Battle of New York meeting Thanos, but Tony decides that it’s probably better not to go into the details of that right now.

“He’s not your father,” Bucky Barnes gently corrects. They’re like the world’s creepiest old married couple. Not for the first time in the past fifteen minutes, Tony wonders what his father would think of this: his life’s obsession in a common-law Bonnie-and-Clyde relationship with the dreamiest Howling Commando.

And this isn’t even a joke. Captain America hooked himself over Bucky Barnes as he told Tony their life story and made out with his neck, which Bucky Barnes seemed completely unperturbed by. That’s not something you do with your platonic crime partner. Or, at least, on this planet.

“So, I help you… what, deprogram Patty Hearst and get you a spaceship. What exactly do I get out of this?”

“Your life, for starters,” Steve Rogers says. He’s now sitting on the counter of Tony’s breakfast nook, swinging his legs, a hand on Bucky Barnes’ shoulder. He looks like the world’s most murderous toddler.

“And a head start. The faster Steve is off of this planet with the Tesseract, the less likely it is that Thanos will come kill half of the population,” Bucky Barnes adds from where he’s leaning against the counter. Steve moves his hand to the back of Bucky’s neck. Bucky puts a hand on Steve’s thigh and squeezes it.

“Woah, woah, who says that you two ambiguously-aligned individuals get to take the one thing on Earth that may be able to save us from Thanos if he does decide to attack?”

“You can’t handle it,” Steve says, voice flat. “Earth has proven that, time and time again. There are places it can be kept safe until it’s destroyed.”

“Newsflash, shiny: you’re from Earth.”

“I haven’t been here in a long time,” Captain America says with his murder glare.

“Doesn’t mean that you weren’t born here like the rest of us. Anyhow, Thor took the Tesseract with him after New York, so you're out of luck there. So you really have no argument as to why I should—“

Captain America jumps off of the counter and closes the space between them in a few large strides. “Now is not the time to argue,” he says in a low hiss. “Every moment I grow less patient with you.” Tony opens his mouth but Steve presses a finger to his lips. “Stop talking,” he orders.

Tony rolls his eyes.

Totally worth it for the way that he starts shaking with rage.

Tony looks over Steve’s shoulder at Bucky Barnes, bending back just a smidge so Steve’s finger is no longer on his lip. “And you’re just cool with me doing brain experimentation on you?”

There’s a long moment. Steve drops his hand, his head swinging over to look at Bucky, who doesn’t move. He blinks. “No,” he says finally. “But I’ll let you.”

Tony realizes then that Bucky Barnes has the most striking blue eyes. They may seem dim in comparison to his murderous beau’s, but they light up the room in their own way – old and scared, but somehow still vibrant with life and a resigned kind of hope.

Tony Stark realizes that he’s… kind of fucked here.

“Fine,” he says. “NASA can suck my ass. Let’s get you a spaceship.”

— —

It takes three weeks for Tony Stark to realize that he’s not a brain surgeon. Three weeks of two dead American superheroes camping out in one of his highly-classified labs and asking for very specific orders from Panera Bread like the grumpiest flowers in the attic. Turns out, not every kind of earth food agrees with Captain Amerigrump’s space age digestive track.

Rather than admitting that to the twins – who have undoubtedly fucked on the floor of his favorite lab – he spends another three days coming up with a plan that will hopefully placate the bitchiest Child of Thanos.

He also spends another day upgrading his suit because he’s not going to let himself get murdered by Captain America. It would be more than he can bear.

— —

“I have a solution,” Tony says as Steve Rogers presses a dagger to his throat.

“Three weeks,” he hisses, pressing it harder. “We’ve waited three weeks.”

“And I’m telling you that those three weeks have borne a solution! And it’s a good one! Or, well, a good enough one. I’m sure you can find the right kind of hypnotist when you go fuck off to Mars or whatever it is you’re planning on doing.”

“What’s the solution?” Bucky asks sounding, like usual, very tired. Steve backs off a step, which Tony guesses is progress.

They must fuck so much that Bucky never sleeps.

Tony can relate.

“These,” Tony says, holding out two very small ear pieces. They’re black – which seems to be the Winter Soldier’s signature color – and hardly noticeable, especially with the greasy hair. “They’re programmed to listen for the first two of your trigger words –“ The only part of the triggers that they would tell him. “ – and when they do, they’ll momentarily deafen you. No adverse effects to your hearing long term and you can control how long it lasts either verbally or by tapping your fingers. It also does about eight hundred other very cool things, you can read all about it in the manual I have painstakingly written for you.”

Bucky walks towards him and holds out his flesh hand, into which Tony deposits the ear pieces. “Thank you,” he says in that quiet voice of his, already putting the ear pieces on.

Before Tony can even ask him if they fit, Steve’s got his knife out again. “And the ship?” he asks.

Tony blinks. “Are you shitting me?” he asks. Of course, Captain Knife doesn’t answer. “I can’t build a spaceship in three weeks while creating ground-breaking tech to help save your boyfriend’s life.”

“You didn’t even do what we asked you to.”

“I did the best I could, given the circumstances! Need I remind you that you’re an uninvited guest here?”

“How long until you have a ship?”

“A year,” Tony says. “Maybe two, if I can’t get grant funding.”

The life seems to leave Bucky Barnes’ body all at once. He slumps against the wall, head dangling. “It’s useless,” he says, voice hoarse. “Steve, I—“

“A communication device,” Steve interrupts.

“Excuse me?” Tony asks.

“A communication device. It only has to reach one person.”

Tony smiles. “That, I can do.”

— —

“Uh, guys? You oughta take a look at this,” Rocket calls from his seat in the Milano’s cockpit.

Gamora sets down the navigational materials she’s been looking at and makes her way towards him. Peter joins her a minute later.

“What’s going on?” she asks.

“Hell if I know,” Peter says.

“I am Groot,” Groot says from his seat behind Rocket as Peter and Gamora file in.

“It’s a communication from your home dump, Quill.”

“Earth is not a dump,” Peter says. “It’s just less exciting and beautiful than most of the other planets in the universe.”

“Sounds terrible,” Drax says, joining the rest of them.

“Yes, it does,” Mantis agrees.

“Can everyone shut up?” Quill asks. “Someone is probably looking for me. They’ve probably spent years trying to find me and this is going to be an emotional, important moment in our lives.”

Rocket snorts. “The message is for Gamora.”

“What?” Peter asks as a familiar figure appears.

“Sister,” the Captain says, eyes glowing in low resolution. “I need a ride.”

“Who is that?” Peter asks as Gamora’s eyes go wide.

“That’s the Captain,” Gamora says. “That’s my brother.”

“Another sibling?” Quill asks. “Oh hell.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next up on Child of Thanos: Steve tears HYDRA apart with his bare hands.

**Author's Note:**

> You can follow me on [Twitter](twitter.com/mamboao3) and/or [Tumblr](whtaft.tumblr.com). You can also spread the good word about this series on [Twitter](https://twitter.com/mamboao3/status/1123232133483515904) and/or [Tumblr](https://whtaft.tumblr.com/post/184873977954/child-of-thanos-an-ongoing-series-by-mambo-steve). Thank you for reading!


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